Webster takes a step backward, which she reads as an invitation.
He closes the door behind her. She glances around at the small foyer, the dining room to the left, the kitchen straight ahead.
“You haven’t changed too much.”
He can’t tell if that’s a compliment or not.
Sheila has on a short black jacket over a pair of slim gray jeans. She’s wearing leather sandals. She has an unusual necklace made of large beads. She’s worn her hair up in a kind of a smashed ponytail. He watches her take in the house.
He hasn’t shaved. The cotton shirt is well past its sell-by date. He probably smells. He hasn’t brushed his teeth.
Why the abrupt change of mind? he wonders.
“Come into the kitchen,” he says.
Webster goes ahead and sweeps up an armful of papers from the kitchen table and lets them fall onto the dining room table. “Bills,” he says when he returns.
Webster wishes there were acronyms for what’s about to happen.
“Would you like some coffee? I have a pot on.”
“Sure,” she said. “Thanks. I’ll leave before she gets home. There’s no need for her to know I was here.”
“Rowan and I don’t keep secrets.”
A lie. Especially lately. He wonders how long it’s been since he and Sheila had a conversation about their child’s welfare. Did they ever?
He notices that her hands are trembling. “I’ve thought about Rowan every day since I left her,” Sheila says.
She raises her chin and purses her mouth. Her mouth is still lovely, he’ll give her that. Her long neck is mostly unwrinkled. He refuses to look at her body.
“If you’ve thought of Rowan every day, why haven’t you called her? You say you’ve been sober for ten years.”
“It’s complicated,” she says.
“Try me.”
“I was afraid,” Sheila says. Webster sets a cup in front of her. “The sobriety still feels new. I was afraid that if I opened that door on… you, Rowan, Vermont… I’d start drinking again. It wasn’t something I positively knew. It was something I felt.”
“Past tense.”
“It’s why I’m here.”
Webster waits.
The grandfather clock in the hallway chimes the hour. Sheila smiles. “You kept that running,” she says. “It’s nice.”
“You hardly notice it when you live with it all the time.” He takes a sip of his own coffee. “Rowan’s a great kid. But she’s right at the edge. The edge of what, I don’t know. She’s testing, testing all the time. And, as I mentioned at your place, she seems to think she has a genetic disposition to alcohol. I told you that I found her here one night in a state of near blackout.”
Sheila winces. “Webster, I’ll do whatever I can to help, but I’ve missed a lot.”
It’s a bald statement, as true as anything she’s said. He tries to imagine himself in her shoes, but his mind won’t let him.
“Rowan’s spinning just beyond my reach,” Webster says. “She’s let her grades go. She was about to go to college at the University of Vermont, but because she’s currently failing English and calculus, she might not be able to enter in the fall.”
“College,” Sheila says with a wistful tone.
“She worked hard for it, too,” he says. “And now she’s almost blown it.”
Sheila glances around the room. “I’m really surprised you didn’t marry,” she says. “You always seemed like the marrying kind.”
“No time,” he says. “When I didn’t have work, I had Rowan. I had to be mother and father to her both.” He pauses and stares at his ex-wife, wondering how she is taking this. An unwanted thought enters his mind.
“It’s amazing,” he says, “given where you came from, that you were in Vermont that night at all. And then you married me.” Webster pauses. “It’s almost as though you decided, spur of the moment, to try on a life, like trying on a new dress. Then you realized that the waistband was too tight, that the sleeves weren’t long enough. And so you chucked it. Me and Rowan and Vermont. Tossed it onto a heap on the floor.”
“It was a dress I loved,” Sheila says. “It didn’t fit, but it was a dress I loved.”
“As in adored? Couldn’t live without?”
“I adored Rowan. You know I did.”
“Tell me one thing,” Webster says. “That night, on the land, the first time we made love, you weren’t on the pill, were you?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Sure you do.”
“It wasn’t what you think,” she says. “I didn’t con you into marrying me. I felt that I could be careless with you because you made me feel safe.”
Webster doesn’t trust himself to speak.
Sheila leans forward. “Webster, I would like to see her.”
“I’ll have to ask Rowan,” he says. “At the moment, she doesn’t even know I’ve found you, never mind that you’re sitting in her house.”
Sheila smoothes her temples.
Webster looks out the kitchen window. “When I went to Chelsea, you were so cold, such a stranger, I decided I didn’t want her to meet you.”
“But I want to meet her,” Sheila says. “I am her mother.”
“I think you have to earn the title of mother,” he says.
“You took that away from me.”
“No, you took it away from yourself.”
She picks up her purse. “This is ridiculous,” she says.
Webster realizes he doesn’t want her to leave. “What happened to you after you drove away that day? I’ve always been curious.”
She gives him a hard stare. “I ditched the car and made my way to my sister’s in Manhattan. I was drinking all the time then. She had a young child, too. I could hardly stand it. I made her life hell. At a bar, I met a man who lived in Piermont, just north of the city. I was nuts about him. I went up there to live with him, but I was still drinking.” She pauses. “One night, we had a spectacular fight, and I went out into the streets, drunk, swearing my ass off. I was arrested on a drunk-and-disorderly and put in jail overnight. Paul said he’d bail me out on one condition: that I go into rehab. That day. And so I did. In upstate New York. When he came to pick me up after my stint was done, he drove me to Mexico, where we lived for eight years. His idea was that if I was far away from familiar surroundings, I wouldn’t be as tempted to drink. And… it worked.”
“What happened to him?” Webster asks.
She tears the elastic off her ponytail with an angry gesture. Her hair falls down her back. “He died of pancreatic cancer.”
Webster closes his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he says. “That must have been awful.”
He gets up and walks around the room, jiggling the change in his pockets. The love of her life, and he died. He feels sorry for her. On the other hand, she was the love of his life. So where does that leave him?
The same place he’s been for fifteen years.
“I’ll think about it,” Webster says. “About whether you should meet Rowan or not. I’ll speak to her. I’ll give her that choice. I might not do that right away, though.”
“Thank you,” Sheila says.
“What changed your mind?” he asks.
“After you left, I leaned against the wall and slid right to the floor. I’ve made a life, Webster. A good life, but it’s fragile. When you came—and I wondered if someday you would come—I was shaken. I reacted badly. But later, I thought about how you said Rowan was in trouble. I don’t believe I can help at all, but I feel I should do something. That’s all I can tell you.”
He nods. That will have to be enough for now.
He will ask Rowan if she wants to do this. He suspects that she’ll be wary at first, but then maybe curious enough to agree.
“I guess I’d better go,” Sheila says. “Can I use the bathroom? As you know, it’s a long ride.”
“You remember where it is?”
“You never made a powder room?”
/> “I’ll do it when I can’t get up the stairs.”
* * *
It’s a good three minutes before Webster realizes his mistake. He bolts up two flights of stairs and finds Sheila sitting on Rowan’s bed, weeping. She holds a stuffed animal that might once have been a dog.
“What the fuck? Sheila?”
Sheila looks up. “I gave her this,” she says. “I had no idea she—you—had kept it. To think it’s been here all these years.” She hugs it to her chest, as if the toy were a child. “Webster, I’ve missed so much. Every bit of this room is a part of Rowan I know nothing about. All those years.” She moans. “The desk, look. And the clarinet. And that mural? My God, Webster. There’s so much in here, and I never saw any of it.”
He didn’t want her to experience this—or did he? He walks to Rowan’s desk and rummages around in the top drawer. He finds what he wants and holds the picture out for Sheila to see. It’s the photo taken right after Rowan’s birth, the snap of Sheila holding Rowan. “She’s had this with her all this time,” he says.
Sheila takes the small wrinkled scrap, studies it, and holds it to her chest. She bends her head.
Webster turns away. Sheila’s loss is horrific. As he listens to his ex-wife sob behind him, he wonders, were the situation reversed and he the alcoholic, would he be doing the same? He’s pretty sure he would. He stands in the threshold, facing away from her, giving her some privacy.
He wants to go to her. He’s used to caring for a person who’s sobbing. It happens to him at least once a week. But he can’t go to this particular person.
When he turns, she’s standing. Her face is ruined. She glances around the room one more time, as if trying to memorize it.
“You good to drive?” Webster asks. He shakes his head. “I meant…”
“I know what you meant,” Sheila says. “Yes, I’m good to drive.” She pauses. “I know I’m different, Webster. But you’re not. I recognize you.”
“Is that good or bad?” he asks.
“It’s good,” she says.
He watches her walk to her car, which she parked on the street. Hers is a problem he can’t fix. He wanted to help Rowan when he went to Chelsea, but what he really did was cause a fault line in his ex-wife to crack wide open.
Webster climbs up to Rowan’s room to make sure Sheila hasn’t left something behind, that the stuffed dog is back in its regular place. He stops as soon as he crosses the threshold. Sheila’s perfume, which he didn’t notice downstairs, is heavy in the room.
Shit.
He starts for the Lysol spray, but then thinks Rowan will want to know why he used it in her room. He decides to open the window. When he tries to raise it, however, he discovers that it’s stuck. He checks that the latch is undone, and still the window won’t budge. He tries the other window at the other end of the room. That one won’t budge either.
What the hell?
He should have fixed these for Rowan months ago. He goes back to the first window. Should he wax the sash? If he gets it open and cracks only one window downstairs, he can always say he was trying to draw the heat out of the house. He gives it one more hard shove, loosening the frame, and something falls from a piece of molding above the window. A white notebook, measuring maybe three inches by two.
He stands with the thing in his hands. That Rowan has hidden it tells Webster to put it back, though he doesn’t know which side of the molding it came from. Left or right?
He’s royally screwed.
He opens to a random page.
I don’t want to be the star of my own afternoon special. I dislike drama in others. How it suddenly manufactures itself.
Another page:
How can a person be allowed to do that? Just leave her baby for fifteen years?
And another page:
Though he’s often clueless, he’s a good dad. I try not to forget that, even when he’s at his most exasperating. He means well. He tries. He’s mine. He loves me. And he’s a hundred times better as a parent than most of my friends’ parents.
There are entries about Tommy and Gina and school that Webster skips. Another entry catches his eye.
When Allison told me just before Christmas, I was shocked and couldn’t fake it. My mother was pregnant with me when they got married! I realized then that I didn’t even know what their wedding date was. Why didn’t I ever ask Dad? Because I was afraid it would make him sad? Allison knew because her mother, who worked for Gramps, knew. I still can’t get used to the fact that I’m a mistake.
Webster winces. He never told his daughter this simple fact?
And yet another entry:
Don’t you actually have to raise a child to be called a mother? I don’t think I’d trade my life for anything. But there were days when I could have used a mother’s advice about female stuff. A lot of nights when I had to be alone and didn’t want to be. But no one can trade a life. It’s a hypothetical. My mother wasn’t here. It’s like trying to imagine a sister or a brother. I can think about it for a couple of minutes, but then it doesn’t go anywhere because it’s…
“What are you doing?”
Webster shuts the notebook with a snap.
Rowan, in maroon sweats, stands at the threshold.
“I was opening the window,” Webster says, “and this fell, and I picked it up…”
“You’re reading it,” she says.
“It just…”
“You had no right to do that,” Rowan says.
“It just fell open…,” he says, knowing how lame that sounds.
“YOU HAD NO FUCKING RIGHT!” his daughter yells. She puts her hands up against the jambs, as if holding herself back from charging. “That was mine! That was personal!”
“I know it was, I know it is,” Webster protests, dropping the diary onto the bed.
“Get out!” Rowan screams. “Get out of this room, and don’t ever, ever, ever come back. Ever. DO YOU HEAR ME?”
He has never seen this level of rage in his daughter. Rowan moves inside the room to allow her father to leave. As soon as he’s gone, she slams the door so hard the attic shakes.
Webster knows that Rowan spent some part of the afternoon at the hairdresser with Gina. He won’t make it easy for her to ignore him tonight. In his shirt and jeans, he waits for her to come down the stairs. Every time he thinks about the notebook, he cringes.
He can hear the clicking of high heels on the floor above him. He gapes when Rowan descends the stairs and walks into the kitchen. She’s chosen a black dress, high waisted, that looks disturbingly like the one Sheila wore to their wedding. Rowan has pearls at her throat, a gift from her grandmother. His daughter walks to a mirror in the back hallway. She turns from side to side as a model might. His daughter is a woman, he tells himself. He’s had this thought before, but each time he realizes it, it strikes him anew. He tries not to think about it at all, but Rowan reminds him again and again. When he sees the way she is with Tommy, his head fills with static, like a TV on a channel with no signal. It’s none of his business, Webster tells himself over and over, but of course it is. How can it not be?
“Those are some heels,” he says, the first time he’s spoken to her since he left her room.
Rowan doesn’t respond.
“I want to get your picture.”
If she refuses him this, he’ll know the rift is even deeper than he fears.
“Where?” she asks, her tone sullen.
“Where we always do them.”
Rowan walks to the bare patch of kitchen wall, against which he has taken many pictures of his daughter: dressed as a bunch of grapes at Halloween; holding her softball trophy aloft, her eyes popping with pride; in her Girl Scout uniform, trying and failing to look serious.
Did she choose the black dress because he told her Sheila wore a similar dress to their wedding? Has he never shown Rowan the wedding pictures? He doesn’t even know where they are—packed up in one of the many boxes in the cellar, he imagines. Was Rowan’s
an unconscious choice or a conscious one?
Rowan shakes her hands at her sides, trying to loosen herself up. He’s seen her do that before games. He aims the digital in her direction, studies the screen, finds an angle he likes. She isn’t smiling. He presses the silver button.
She doesn’t ask to see the picture.
She wrestles with the small purse she is taking with her, performing her own triage. Lipstick in, hairbrush out, ditto hair spray, keys in, mirror in, cell phone in, hand cream out.
It’s a beautiful summer night. He remembers similar weather for his own prom, now called the senior dance. He rented a tux. Do boys do that nowadays? He also remembers his date, Alicia, who had on a poufy dress with big shoulders. At the time, he wondered if she would put out, but she didn’t. He’s pretty sure they both had a decent time.
Webster glances at the clock over the sink. He can hear Tommy’s car in the driveway.
Rowan opens her purse and studies the contents once again.
Of all times to look heartbreakingly lovely.
She snatches up a wrap from a chair. She opens the back door and closes it without a word. Webster walks into the dining room and watches through the window. Tommy is out of the car and on his way toward the house. He and Webster would have shaken hands. Perhaps a look of understanding might have passed between them.
Rowan’s mincing walk in her stilettos might have made Webster laugh. Tommy opens the car door for Rowan, a nice touch. He walks around the back of his car, straightening his sport coat. No tux. When the engine starts, Webster turns away.
No kiss good-bye. No hug. No chance to tell his daughter she looks beautiful.
Webster waits fifteen minutes and then climbs into his cruiser. He has an hour before he has to be at Rescue.
Webster drives away from town and up a long ridge. The moon will be .95 tonight, full tomorrow. He opens all the windows and lets the warm air blow through the car. If he had the radio on, and if he were twenty years younger, he’d sing. He hasn’t been to the top of the ridge in nearly two decades. He’s had calls halfway up, but he’s never gone back to the place he once considered his life’s dream.
He parks the cruiser at the edge of the road and slips out. The mountains are purple, green, and rust-colored, depending on the light and the high clouds. He wades into the tall grasses. He’s amazed that whoever owns the land hasn’t sold it to a developer or built on it himself. The previous owner passed away.